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Ask Slashdot: What's the Best Dumb Phone?
An anonymous reader writes: For those of us who don't need or want a smartphone, what would be the best dumb phone around? Do you have a preference over flip or candy bar ones? What about ones that have FM radio? Do any of you still use dumb phones in this smart phone era? Related question: What smart phones out now are (or can be reasonably outfitted to be) closest to a dumb phone, considering reliability, simplicity, and battery life? I don't especially want to give up a swiping keyboard, a decent camera, or podcast playback, but I do miss being able to go 5 or more days on a single charge.
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So, you want a dumb phone, but you want it to have smart phone features, and a huge battery charge, and lots of doo-dads and stuff ... just like a smart phone?
Well, good luck with that.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Those things really are indestructible. I would hop on Amazon or ebay and pick up a used one. Definitely worth it.
If that is not an option, then I would go something candybar. Every phone I have seen broken that had moving parts broke at the moving parts.
What's the best dumb phone? I want calls, voice mail, text message and battery life. That's it.
"Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." - Ron Swanson
If you want a smartphone that isn't a smartphone, I am assuming you want to avoid the app infrastructure of apple and google? I have no idea what your actual goal is, but blackberry solved this ages ago. What you really seem to want is a smartphone from before iPhones ruined the market for practical smartphones.
I submit to you: Blackberry Bold
insane battery life (remember BB was competing with dumb phones not smartphones, so the charge every 8 hours thing hadn't started yet) - 12 days standby 6 hours talk, 50 hours audio playback
camera, sure it has a decent camera
Insanely good Keyboard that openly laughs at "swipe" keyboards.
Podcasts, sure
costs about 80 dollars now.
Seriously, under what circumstances will you be away from electricity power for more than two days? And that, without considering battery pakcs, a second battery or a portable solar charger...
1) Multi-day backpacking trip. Yes, you could carry extra extra battery, solar charger, etc. But, chances are these are space and weight are at a premium and those items may not make the cut. If one even remembers to bring them along.
2) Traveling to a foreign country where the requisite power adapters have not been acquired or failed to make it into the pack. Bonus for traveling through intermediate countries that have different plugs than your source or destination.
3) Shorter but busy trips where the charging just does not happen. (After a long day, arrive at hotel, go directly to bed. Wake up in the morning. Did I charge my phone? Oops. Oh, well. Gotta run.)
In some of these cases, there is no usable service anyway so you might as well turn the phone off. But I don't always remember to do this and my experience hiking is that it is very easy for me to accidentally turn the phone on and not notice if it still in my pocket.
And, of course, you need to be prepared for battery degradation. Most phones these days do not have replaceable batteries. I always cut the manufacturer's battery life in half when deciding whether it suits my needs.